On Saturday, CHS Science Bowl will host a Science Bowl invitational. This will be the first time CHS has hosted an invitational.
CHS Science Bowl is composed of three teams, each with four members and an alternate. Virginia Kundrat, Science Bowl sponsor and chemistry teacher, said the invitational is tentatively set to start at 9 a.m. and will feature a round-robin format to prepare students for the regional competition. The team that wins the regional competition will proceed to the national competition in Washington D.C. in April.
“(We want) to let everybody get more practice doing competition and to encourage other schools in this area that don’t have Science Bowl clubs, to give them some exposure and let them see what it’s all about,” Kundrat said.
Joshua Segaran, Science Bowl founder, officer and senior, along with the other Science Bowl officers, will organize and volunteer at the invitational.
According to Segaran, a typical Science Bowl competition consists of a buzzer system and a lockout system in which the first person to buzz in to answer a question is the first person who can answer that question.
“Since we don’t have as many volunteers as we would need for an actual Science Bowl competition, we’ll have one person reading the questions, one person recognizing whoever buzzes in, so there will be four buzzers on each team,” Segaran said.
Segaran said the team can take out a competing member and replace that member with the alternate at the halftime of each round. Additionally, Segaran also said the officers will use questions from various sources for the invitational.
“Some of (the questions) we bought, some of them we wrote, some of them we got from other schools. Science Bowl is a competition over science, as you can get from the name. Science Bowl is a competition over science in general. It tests over math, physics, chemistry, biology and earth science and astronomy mainly,” Segaran said.
Bharat Gummalla, Science Bowl member and sophomore, said the invitational will help him prepare for the regional competition, especially because this is his first year in Science Bowl.
Kundrat said she expects at least five others high schools to come to the invitational, and each of the rounds will take place in different science rooms.
Gummalla said his team divided the various Science Bowl subjects among themselves so each of them could study fewer subjects with greater depth. He said he believes this approach will be effective for the format of the competition.
“Science Bowl, unlike some other things, is really competitive because it’s on the spot,” Gummalla said. “And I tend to like those competitions where it’s just kind of sporadic and you have to show your knowledge on the spot.”